The NIC CollectionIncludes hundreds of declassified National Intelligence Estimates and other publications produced by the NIC or its predecessor organizations, the Office of National Estimates and the Office of Reports and Estimates. The NIC database, housed within CIA's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Electronic Reading Room, includes some 1100 documents that have been declassified and made available to the public, either partially or in their entirety, under FOIA. The earliest of these dates back to 1946; several were published as late as the 1990s. Additional items are being added regularly. Collectively, they constitute an important historical record of Intelligence Community analysis at the highest level; individually, many make for fascinating and instructive reading.

National Intelligence Council - Global Trends

Monday, April 02, 2012

National Intelligence Council

Global Trends

For nearly two decades, National Intelligence Council's Global Trends Report has been shaping strategic conversations within and beyond the US Government. In creating the report, the NIC engages expertise from outside government on factors of such as globalization, demography and the environment, producing a forward-looking document to aid policymakers in their long term planning on key issues of worldwide importance.

Since the first Global Trends was released in 1997, the audience for each report has expanded, generating more interest and reaching a broader audience that the one that preceded it.

A new Global Trends report is published every four years following the U.S. presidential election.

Global Trends 2035

Critical to its insight and policy-relevance have been meetings worldwide with a wide range of interlocutors—including government officials, scholars, business people, civil society representatives, and others—in workshops, exchanges, and other events designed to stimulate thinking about possible global trajectories and discontinuities over the next two decades.

Individuals from scores of countries and walks of life have helped the NIC examine trends—including economics, demography, ecology, energy, health, governance, security, identity, and geopolitics—and understand their implications for peace, security, and prosperity worldwide.

The NIC crystallizes ideas gleaned from these meetings as well as extensive research in a Global Trends report published every four years, between the US Presidential Election Day and Inauguration Day.

Who Reads Global Trends?

In December 2016, the US President-elect will receive Global Trends 2035, the sixth edition in the National Intelligence Council’s (NIC) series aimed at providing a framework for thinking about the future.

This time period affords the incoming or returning President and senior staff the opportunity to weigh the report’s judgments and lay the groundwork to address long-range issues of importance to national and global security.

The report also is publicly released, aiding policymakers, scholars, and others in many countries in better understanding possible trends and discontinuities in the global environment.

Join the Conversation

As the NIC prepares Global Trends 2035, it is consulting an increasingly diverse set of voices worldwide—both established and new—to help it question assumptions, identify new issues, and help conceptualize a framework that lays out in a cogent and understandable style the consequential trends and surprises that could occur in the next 20 years.

Some of the questions the NIC and its partners are exploring include:

Will power continue to diffuse or concentrate in the future?

To what extent will further advances in communications technology transform societies and the relationship between citizens and governments?

How will automation and robotics impact human employment and economies?

Which currently unresolved questions or uncertainties regarding society, economy, and politics are likely to be most game-changing through 2035?

National Intelligence Council - Who We Are

National Intelligence Council

Who We Are

The National Intelligence Council supports the Director of National Intelligence in his role as head of the Intelligence Community (IC) and is the IC’s center for long-term strategic analysis.

Since its establishment in 1979, the NIC has served as a bridge between the intelligence and policy communities, a source of deep substantive expertise on intelligence issues, and a facilitator of Intelligence Community collaboration and outreach.

The NIC’s National Intelligence Officers — drawn from government, academia, and the private sector—are the Intelligence Community’s senior experts on a range of regional and functional issues.